What should i provide to my affiliates?

[Sophist]

Hello all,

In getting my product ready to launch, can somebody provide a concise list as to all the things I should be providing to my affiliates to ensure they have everything they need in order to market the product effectively? Things like graphics, which ones should I make available to them? Emails? etc. I want to make sure they have everything they need.

Thanks everyone.

[Adam Carn]

You should include stuff like:

AdWord ads with keywords
email ads
banners
blog reviews
articles
article resource box text
forum signatures
social media reviews
video ads

Hope that helps.

Thanks,
Adam

[Alexa Smith]

I can tell you what I need as a potential affiliate.

In this order of importance:-

1. Good sales page that I think converts well (most important - everything else including commission-rate is secondary to this)

2. Lack of a vendor's opt-in on the sales page (like many professional affiliates, I have no interest at all in becoming an affiliate if there is one, because there are plenty of other products without one and it's just a complication I don't need)

3. Evidence of conversion (if possible - and I accept that this may be subjective and interpretable and I'll have to use my judgment in assessing it, and whether I believe it, to some extent)

4. A good product (I won't become an affiliate without assessing that for myself, either with a review copy or sometimes by buying one myself if the vendor says "no" to my polite, convincing, well-reasoned request for one)

5. Decent earnings per sale (either high price and 50/55% commissions, or, if at a lower price, 70/75% commissions)

I need all five of the above to be interested.

(Less important, but a consideration) 6. A gravity figure that's not too high (because I don't want heavy competition from large numbers of active affiliates with big Adwords budgets)

I'm not really interested in (7.) "affiliate toys" (like email copy, banners, articles, and other stuff I can make/get myself) but I suppose they're a small additional plus, if available, and admittedly they can help to create the impression that the vendor wants to co-operate with his affiliates, which doesn't hurt. But the best "affiliate page" in the world won't interest me if the product and/or sales page are no good or if there's a vendor's opt-in there.

[Sophist]

Adam, thanks very much for your help. And Alexa thanks for breaking it down from the affiliate point of view. This helps greatly.

[dexterc]

For me personally...

All of the above but some areas to note:

- No typo mistakes in the sales page (shows credibility of the Creator)

- Hide away the link to the affiliate pages (make it a private JV)

- Key pointers to the Product being offered for writing Reviews (I would prefer to draft out my personal reviews based on the key pointers of the product then having mass Cut-And-Paste email promos - boring having too many promoting the similar products - end of day boils down to who is the last one who send the promo and having the cookie set)

[abo28]

Having a promotional package may be useful for some affiliates and JV partners that don't have the time to create it themselves (don't forget, those people are very very busy).

On the other hand, it's true that most potential affiliates that want "ready made" promotional materials are pretty lazy, so it's possible that they won't make a lot of efforts to promote your program. Action-oriented affiliates usually conceive their own marketing strategies and create appropriate promotional tools to put those strategies into practice.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

The most important thing you can give affiliates IMHO is great conversion rates.

Therefore I strongly always recommend merchants do conversion testing and tweaking with PPC before launching their affiliate program.

WHY? The proof is in the pudding. You can have what you think is the best product and best site but until you get lots of traffic flowing to the site you can't know for sure if a good percentage are going to buy.

You don't want to use affiliates as your guinea pigs to do your conversion testing for you. It's too hard to get good affiliates, they are hard to keep and easy to loose, if your conversions aren't up to par.

[Sophist]

Question: Have any of you guys ever done one promotion and looked to see the affiliates that produced the most and then for future launches only worked with those affiliates? How's something like that work?